Botswana is currently experiencing a serious shortage of UHT milk with most wholesalers and shops around the country having a little or none at all to sell.
Metro Sefalana Cash and Carry merchandise director Dave Wykerd said the situation is very bad and that they cannot meet the customer demand. He said they get their supply from three main supplies; Clover Botswana, Parmalat Botswana and Woodlands Dairy in South Africa. "The crisis in milk supply is bad for our business as most shops country wide buy from our outlets," he says.
Wykerd says he understood the milk producer price to be the cause of the problem because it has not changed for a long time despite the fact that inflation keeps going up. He said this has left most farmers with no option but to divert from dairy farming to currently lucrative cash crops such as wheat and maize.
As a way of trying to rectify the problem, he says his company is communicating with a supplier in Hong Kong on the feasibility of importing milk from overseas. "Our business has been affected very badly."
For his part, CA Sales National Sales Manager Charles Mika said his company gets its supply from South Africa and Zimbabwe, noting that these countries have to satisfy their markets first before exporting milk to other countries.
A recent report quotes Chief Animal Production officer in the Ministry of Agriculture Stanley Mosielele confirming that there is the likelihood of a decline in local milk production due to the prevailing drought, shortage of feeds and the resultant escalation in feed prices. Mosielele said Botswana is 50 per cent self-sufficient in fresh raw liquid milk production, adding that the output is likely to drop because most of milk producers in the southern part of the country are experiencing drought.
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